A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter D

Dante

Historical Figure
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

The influential Italian poet (1265–1321), author of The Divine Comedy, a cornerstone of world literature.

Detailed Definition
Dante Alighieri was a 13th–14th century Italian poet whose masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, profoundly shaped Western literature and religious imagination. His journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, guided by Virgil and Beatrice, established enduring poetic archetypes. Frequently referenced in poetry, Dante symbolizes spiritual quest, moral reckoning, and the power of poetic vision to map the soul’s journey.
Example
Example in poetry:
Dante opens Inferno with “Midway upon the journey of our life / I found myself within a forest dark”; In Purgatorio, he meets Beatrice, who says, “Look at me well: I am, I am Beatrice”; T.S. Eliot quotes Dante in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”: “I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be”; Ezra Pound invokes Dante’s “clear song” as a model for poetic precision; In Paradiso, Dante writes, “The love that moves the sun and the other stars”; Matthew Arnold references Dante’s “eternal note of sadness” in “Dover Beach” as a spiritual benchmark.
Additional Notes
Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy is a cornerstone of Western literature, structuring the afterlife into Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. His first-person pilgrimage, guided by Virgil (reason) and Beatrice (faith), synthesizes classical and Christian thought. Poets reference Dante for his vivid imagery, moral architecture, and lyrical intensity. T.S. Eliot called him “the universal poet” and used him extensively in “The Waste Land.” Students should study his terza rima form, allegorical method, and concept of contrapasso (punishment fitting the sin). Dante’s influence spans from Chaucer to modernists like Pound and Eliot. Key for understanding medieval cosmology, theological poetry, and intertextuality. Related terms: allegory, vernacular literature, limbo.
Also Known As
Alighieri Florentine Poet Pilgrim of the Divine Comedy Father of the Italian Language
Skip to main content